I’m extremely lucky to be a visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame, Australia, along with my wife, who is directing a study abroad program for a group of sixteen students from the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University in Minnesota. We are living in Fremantle, a really lively town about 22 kilometers from Perth, the most isolated city in the world. It’s been glorious, and some of the local imagery has seeped into my work.

Since April is poetry month, here’s a little parody to start things off.The original is Robert Herrick’s great little poem “Upon Julia’s Clothes.”

as winds blow cool from the western sea.I’ve known the sharp taste of fruit

on my tongue, kiwi and mangoestart as little spears, burn of chilies, brightjab of garlic sizzling in olive oil, and I’ve

been gladdened to walk alone throughparklands and city streets, and by the shore

as the tide rose and waves crashed, turningwhite sand gray. But there are whispersin my town, soft spoken men with many fears

wrapped around their arms like snakestangled in the boughs of trees.

And there are louder voices filledwith violence and hate. “Can we notkill them all? I’m ready to take some people out.”

And there are shouts and people runningin the street, and sirens, and mothers

huddling with weeping childrenas they hurry to their homes. And where am I,with my hunger appeased and my healthy

stride? Have I opened my door wide enoughto allow the strangers in? When shadows fall,

will I know the taste of abstinence, flintyflavor of courage sipped from a tin cupdipped in water so cold my teeth will ache?

Will I suppress my terror by decency and discipline,and climb the burning rope to the core of my better self?

Paper and StrawWhat has gone wrong, that we should all seem to be made of paper and straw? -John Cheever, notebooks

Not long ago, we dove from slippery cliffsinto a cool sea, our slick bodies lithewith each stroke, every breath and turnof the head. We swam into every new day,and in the sun salt dried on our arms and legs,our wild and ruined hair. Inland, by the river,we listened to the song of frogs. Once, farfrom any marked trail, we saw a pythondangling from a branch, and watched in aweas its brown and olive body stiffenedand moved along the trunk of a eucalyptus tree.

But today, our houses seem to bend towarddrying grass, away from passionate starlingsrustling among oak leaves, or green lizardsof memory. When I reach for you, you turntoward another country in another time,before town halls stuffed with anxiousbodies, before angry crowds and placards,fear radiating out into the night sky. Sirensin the distance, and many of our neighborsgone. We seem to be made of paper and straw,ready to ignite, burn, turn to ash in the summer wind.

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